Slender
by ImXDragon
Summary: One-shot: Halloween Horror. Could this faceless terror be the end of all of Sherlock Holmes's life and reason? Crossover with Slender: The Eight Pages.


**A/N: So here's a bit of Halloween Horror! I know a lot is left unexplained, but it really isn't necessary. **

**This is a SlenderXSherlock Holmes crossover. Slender is a computer game, and perhaps the scariest game I have ever played.**

**Disclaimer: I do not own Slender: The Eight Pages, The Slender Logo, or Sherlock Holmes.  
**

**Hope you enjoy!**

When he awoke, the first things he noticed were the tree branches clumped in a tangled mass above his head. Next was the thick fog that swirled all around him.

His fast-working mind suddenly took everything in; he was no longer in London, he was in a forest at night, there was a thick cloud of fog, he had no memory of how he had gotten there, and there was a single flickering candle standing on a golden handle sat in the grass beside him. There were no footprints, no unnatural marks, no smells, no signs, nothing.

After a moment's hesitation to contemplate this sudden predicament, Sherlock Holmes took the candle and got to his feet. There were two things to be done: one, find out how he had gotten here, two, find a way back to London.

So he began to walk.

The candle provided a small ring of light around him, though it did little good against the fog. He used the candle to look for signs, clues, anything to help him, but there was absolutely nothing. He eventually stopped looking, knowing he would find nothing, and concentrated on finding his way back to London instead.

What could he learn from the throng of trees around him? He was in a deciduous forest, judging by the scattered leaves on the ground and the oak trees. The temperature was warm, which only supported his deduction that he was no longer in London; he last remembered that Baker Street had been locked in a mild winter. He had probably awoken in somewhere in the Western Hemisphere. How he had gotten there, he had no idea.

He was suddenly yanked from his pondering when he spotted a white sheet of paper glued to the bark of a mangled tree. With a closer look, he saw that two pictures were scrawled on the paper. They looked like rough, childish drawings of a tree and a tall stick figure. Beside the pictures, letters were written carelessly, one on top of the other.

_Follows_

He reached out to take the paper so he could examine it more closely, but as soon as he removed the thin paper from the bark…

_Thud…thud…thud…thud…_

Loud, echoing footsteps suddenly came from every direction; the very ground seemed to tremble with every thud.

Holmes froze, listening closely. What monstrous beast could possibly make such a noise? No animal or man could make a deep, loud footstep as the one he heard now. A feeling of dread began to rise in him, but he immediately shoved it down. Such emotions wouldn't help him, nor would they ever.

He tried to ignore the monstrous footsteps as he continued his trek, and tried instead to pay attention to the soft crunching of his own footsteps on the leaves. Gazing up at the amber-black sky above him also helped, even if that sky was broken by the branches of the oaks.

But the thudding never ceased, nor did it grow closer. It stayed at a constant rhythm; _thud…thud…thud…thud…_

Holmes continued on like this for some time, walking in the same direction, but with no results. This forest was much bigger than he had originally thought. Just when he was beginning to grow weary, something caught his eye.

Another note.

He stopped and held the candle closer; this page bore something different.

_HELP ME!_

Undaunted by the pleading message, Holmes tore the page from the bark. This time, nothing changed; the rhythm of the thudding continued at its same pace.

He took this time to examine the two pages he held. Both were written with the same ink and tool, and they both bore the same harsh, scrawling handwriting. A million possibilities swarmed his mind, but he didn't have enough data to form a definite theory.

And so he kept walking, keeping somewhat in pace with the echoing thudding in the distance.

With each step, and each thud, his frustration grew. Minutes passed by quickly, yet the still night seemed to drag on. He had long given up on figuring out how he had come here, all he wanted to do was find a way out.

He couldn't tell how long he had been walking when he reached a clearing in the woods. In the center of the clearing was a very thick tree with wicked, strangling branches pointing upwards. These branches were bare, unlike all of the other trees. Naturally, he went to look more closely.

Somehow, he wasn't surprised to find what he did.

A note with the same rough writing:

_DON'T LOOK…OR IT TAKES YOU!_

Someone seemed to be trying to scare anyone who passed through the forest. Either that or they were warnings written by a frightened victim.

He took this page too…then immediately knew he had made a mistake.

As soon as his fingers had touched the page, a looming, high-pitched echo droned out again and again, just as constant and stable as the monstrous footsteps in the distance. What could possibly be the source of these strange noises? Those footsteps were of no man or beast, and those noises were unearthly, terrible things.

Holmes was not one to believe in the supernatural, but as he stood there, with his candle slowly dimming, he could not think of any logical explanation. That is what frightened him most.

He folded the three pages, and stuffed them in his pocket, then began walking farther into the forest with a faster gait. He would be happy as soon as he left this forest and all of its oddities.

Then the strangest and most terrifying sensation overwhelmed him.

White streaks blurred his vision and a fuzzy, shrieking sound deafened his ears. Holmes dropped the candle, which immediately burned out, and clapped his hands over his ears. Through the blinding streaks, he saw what he thought to be an impossibly tall man dressed neatly in a suit. But it was no ordinary man, for his white head was faceless, and his whole being seemed to scream out signs of evil. Could this world hold such a terrible evil?

Holmes's mind suddenly flared with fear; his body grew numb. It was only his shear panic that drove him to run. He weaved through the trees, all the while attempting to fight off the unnatural sensations that had blocked his senses.

And then as suddenly as it had come, it left. His vision cleared, and his ears stopped hearing the terrible noise. His crazed mind suddenly calmed, returning to its normal, some-what sophisticated way.

Holmes skidded to a stop, and then leaned on a tree as he breathed heavily. After a moment to calm his shaken nerves, he mentally slapped himself. How could he let such fear drive him, rather than common sense? That man had been a figment of the imagination of his tired and stressed mind…but the sense spasm? What could that have been?

He shook his head, clearing it of unnecessary thoughts. Once he could think logically again, he thought about his current situation. He was now without light, due to his fearful flight, and the fog had seemed to grow thicker than before. He could hardly see a yard ahead of him.

However much he now dreaded this forest, he knew he would have to continue his journey. He wouldn't get out, and back to London, if he just stayed put. Thus he began walking once more.

How long would this night last? It was hard to tell since the moon was not visible through the thick cover of the leaves above him. As far as Holmes could tell, he had been walking, and running at one point, for hours. His sore feet agreed with this new deduction.

Holmes threw these pointless thoughts aside when he saw yet another page stuck to the bark of a nearby tree. It had one simple illustration on it: of a tall, well-dressed man without a face…

He felt some of his previous fear well up in his throat, but he pushed it down with a harsh swallow. He then tore the page from the bark, and sat down, leaning his back against the tree, took out the other three pages and laid them out before him on the ground.

Holmes looked over them again and again, contemplating, pondering. These notes had warned him about something in the woods. Just after he had gotten the third note, he had faced a sudden panic attack. The forth note was an illustration of the exact thing that he had seen that had caused such a frenzy of horror. This meant the terror of the woods couldn't be a figment of his imagination.

Then it was probably some fiend terrifying the people who passed through this forest. More likely, it was the men who had brought him here, if he had indeed been brought here.

To say otherwise would be to admit that he believed in some superstition. And although there was a nagging in the back of his subconscious, prompting him to believe in something so horrible, he would always refuse to be weary of such fantasy.

And yet he would be proven wrong, for it all suddenly came back again.

Holmes hissed his frustration as his vision glared and blurred again. The fuzzy shrieking in his ears burned with a new fire. The tall, slender man had suddenly appeared through the trees, only a few yards away from him.

Filled with the same sudden frenzy of horror, Holmes scrambled to his feet, scattering the pages like the leaves he had unsettled. He raced through the trees, the low branches slapping his face and shoulders. A trickle of blood blinded his left eye even further, and Holmes now ran with a sort of blind panic.

Holmes's foot was caught in a root, and with a cry of pain, he fell to the ground with a hard _thump. _He kicked out with his legs, ignoring the pain and trying to free himself. His logical thinking had fled from him faster than he could run himself. He was left alone without his own reason.

He looked behind him and could just barely make out the outline of the slender man. He blinked; it was suddenly closer. Holmes turned away, breathing in short gasps, sweat pouring down his neck and back. He was left immobile, the root would not budge.

The slender man was closer; Holmes could no longer see anything past the blinding white. He cried out, completely taken over by fear.

He had one last image, the white, empty place where the slender man's face should have been.

Then all was black.


End file.
